


Unspoken

by skund



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-17
Updated: 2010-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skund/pseuds/skund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diana and Clark struggle with loss. Written for <a href="http://fictionalknight.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://fictionalknight.livejournal.com/"><strong>fictionalknight</strong></a>  's <a href="http://fictionalknight.livejournal.com/80479.html">'If You Only Knew' prompt request</a>, and the <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/cliche_bingo/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/cliche_bingo/"><strong>cliche_bingo</strong></a>  prompt 'Diaries and Journals'. Also inspired by dialogue in <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/worlds_finest/674781.html#cutid1">JLA #31</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken

Clark never thought he’d call the long, metal corridors of the Watchtower unfriendly. They were usually alive with familiar faces and endless conversation, a rainbow of colour and sound. But now in the early hours of the morning, with the sparse nightshift lights casting shadows at every corner, the empty halls felt barren and cold. Sleep had eluded Clark for days and in desperation he’d taken to wandering the darkened station alone. He couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t stop, or the memories would play again. If he had to watch his best friend fall broken and burnt to the ground again Clark knew he would scream.

So instead he walked. The constant movement was meant to be soothing, a distraction. And it could well have been if he didn’t find himself repeatedly ending up in the same place. With a shake of his head he’d turn and walk away, only to find himself back again an indeterminate time later. The third time he ended up outside that door he stopped, reached out to trace the sinuous lines of that familiar dark shape. Then he stopped as a smile graced his face. If Bruce could see him now he’s called him a sentimental fool, tell him to go do something useful rather than mope. Not that the damn hypocrite would’ve been doing anything different; he just called it brooding.

Clark stared at that door for a few more silent minutes, before deciding on a whim to open it. The door opened silently and Clark froze at the unexpected inhabitant within.

‘Clark.” Diana said, shocked.

“Oh.” Clark murmured as he reached to close the door. “I’m sorry.”

“No, wait. Please stay, Kal.”

Clark paused in the doorway for a moment before entering the room. Diana was standing next to the open wardrobe, a pair of Bruce’s gauntlets in her hand. Clark stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. It felt wrong to be there together. Wandering alone Clark could consider the last few days his own private hell. But to stand with Diana in Bruce’s private sanctuary made it all too real. The tension in the room was awkward, it felt wrong to meet her eyes.

“I never got the chance.” Diana spoke, breaking the silence. “Amongst my people, the fallen are tended before burial. Their wounds are tended and bound. But I never… He was…”

Clark stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, his need to protect almost subconscious. Diana turned to look up at him, seeing the loss and confusion in his eyes that she knew haunted her own.

“I would have given him that honour. He had more than earned it.”

“Yes.” Clark replied with a nod. There was nothing else he could say.

Diana smiled faintly then looked down at the gauntlets in her hand. “I thought I should order his possessions here instead, before Nightwing – before Richard - comes to collect them.”

“You couldn’t sleep either.”

She laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. “I find myself incapable of a great many things of late.”

Clark squeezed the hand on her shoulder. Diana accepted the silent comfort gratefully.

“Come, we have work.” She said as she stepped away from Clark, back to the open wardrobe and its meticulous racks of armour, capes and other tools of the trade. He turned to the desk and began sorting the contents of the drawers.

The pair sat in silence as they worked, as the rich smell of leather and the whisper of silk filled the room. But there was little they could achieve. The room was already immaculate, with every item neatly in place. There were no little heartaches of a book half read and carelessly dogeared, no love letters secreted away or half filled diaries. Clark found himself moving slower and slower until eventually his hands stilled and he sat starting blindly at the bare grey walls. If he hadn’t known whose room this was he never would have guessed - there was nothing of Bruce here. The realisation was painful, but comforting in a way. Bruce had given so little of himself even when he was standing with you shoulder to shoulder, why would he differ any in death?

“He’s not here, Diana.” Clark asked, still staring at the wall. “Why would he be?”

The princess was silent.

“He never wanted to be in the League. He only stuck around because he thought we were too inept to save the world on our own. He… tolerated us. Especially me.”

Diana finished folding a cape, running her fingers along its slick surface. “Don’t be stupid, Kal. He loved you.”

Clark snorted and turned to frown at Diana. “What, Bruce?”

“Yes, he did.” She whispered.

“I don’t think-“

Her blue eyes meeting his cut him off. “You challenge me on truth?”

He paused, considering. “No.”

Diana tucked the folded cape away with the rest and rose gracefully to her feet. She walked over to Clark and bent to drop a kiss on his forehead. “Keep going.”

“This is pointless.”

“Keep going.” She repeated as she turned for the door. Clark watched her leave then sat alone in the empty room. He contemplated leaving too but something in Diana’s words pulled at him. He kept sorting through the desk, working through piles of analytical printouts, dossiers and performance reports. Almost an hour later he was pulling out schematics from the bottom-most drawer. It wasn’t until he’d removed the last handful of paper that that something about that final drawer struck him as odd. It took him a few moments to realise it was shorter than all the previous ones. He switched his vision to x-ray to look beyond the back of the draw, and there is was hidden away– a large and overstuffed journal. Curiosity got the better of him and before he knew it the journal was in his hands. He examined the book carefully, noting the scuffed leather, edges bent and worn, and the way the binding seemed almost ready to give out. Bruce must have had this for years.

Reading it seemed like sacrilege; to invade the personal thoughts of such a private man. He sat for a long time with the leather warm against his palms. Then he took a deep breath and opened the front cover, expecting a page of Bruce’s dense and slightly manic scrawl recounting events or feelings. Confessions, anecdotes or passions. Fears. Loves. What he did see was entirely unexpected.

Himself.

A bashful looking younger self gazing back at him from the grainy newsprint image, next to his own byline. And an article on Smallville’s annual corn festival, of all things. Clark blinked, turned the page. There he was again. Writing on underfunding in schools, then again on a local business conference. And again. And again. He flicked through the journal at speed, but every single page was a clipping, photocopy or scan of his work, or articles noting nominations, awards or praise. All him.

Clark sat dumbstruck. Then a slow, sad smile crept onto his face. Of all the things to leave behind and it wasn’t even part of Bruce himself, just a meticulous collection of newsprint clippings about a mediocre Metropolis reporter. Diana’s words returned to him unbidden, and he felt an itch start up behind his eyes that couldn’t be tears. Superman doesn’t cry.

He climbed slowly to his feet, journal gripped tightly in his hands, and crossed the room to the bed that would never be warm again. He lay down and curled on his side, flipping back to the start of the journal and began to read. His own words read off the page echoed weirdly in his head, inspiring fragments of memory from the day or week that story was being written. It was soothing in its own way, to feel those fragments of lost time surface again from the recesses of his mind. Clark fell asleep to dream of nights filled with the sound of silk, the glow of white lenses in the shadows. That infernal superior smirk. Fearless acts of courage. Wings against the Gotham skyline. Soaring into the night.


End file.
